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Five years ago the European Commission published a green paper that talked in grand terms of its desire to provide an overall European Union framework for corporate social responsibility. That vision is now in tatters. The latest EC white paper is a ragbag of minor measures dressed up as a strategy. If Europe becomes a pole of excellence on CSR, as the paper’s title suggests, it will not be because of anything the Commission has done, or is proposing to do.
The European Alliance on CSR, its big new idea, is anything but. It is hard to see how a ‘political umbrella’ of existing and new initiatives will benefit anyone. There is no shortage of partnership-building organizations in Europe already. The new body will at best avoid the accountability challenges that have beset the United Nations Global Compact: the EC says that it will not be keeping a list of who is involved, so it can hardly be expected to know what they are doing.
In fairness, the Commission should not shoulder all the blame. NGO intransigence has played an important part. The Commission made it clear from the outset that it regarded CSR as a voluntary activity and did not favour regulation in this area. The failure of the NGOs to accept this led directly to the breakdown of the multistakeholder forum on CSR that was supposed to have played a vital part in informing the future direction of policy.
Crucially, though, officials failed to anticipate the speed of development. While they were deciding whether to devise commonly agreed criteria for reporting non-financial performance, the Global Reporting Initiative was rolling up its sleeves and getting on with the job. While they were pondering assurance guidelines, the AA1000 standards were being expanded. Meanwhile, pressure for greater disclosure of companies’ social and environmental impacts was growing not in Brussels, but in London, Paris, Frankfurt and other financial centres. The Commission was quite simply too slow, and too late. Now it is paying the price.
Since jumping on the CSR bandwagon five years ago, the Commission has achieved little and has now effectively jumped off. It has sidelined itself. Companies will join its European Alliance not because they particularly want to, but because it is politic for them to do so. Membership will anyway not require them to do very much. Some sectors, such as higher educational establishments with an interest in CSR and small businesses, stand to benefit, but overall there will be few winners. An opportunity to show how policy makers can support the voluntary approach has been wasted.
see also pages one and nine
The European Alliance on CSR, its big new idea, is anything but. It is hard to see how a ‘political umbrella’ of existing and new initiatives will benefit anyone. There is no shortage of partnership-building organizations in Europe already. The new body will at best avoid the accountability challenges that have beset the United Nations Global Compact: the EC says that it will not be keeping a list of who is involved, so it can hardly be expected to know what they are doing.
In fairness, the Commission should not shoulder all the blame. NGO intransigence has played an important part. The Commission made it clear from the outset that it regarded CSR as a voluntary activity and did not favour regulation in this area. The failure of the NGOs to accept this led directly to the breakdown of the multistakeholder forum on CSR that was supposed to have played a vital part in informing the future direction of policy.
Crucially, though, officials failed to anticipate the speed of development. While they were deciding whether to devise commonly agreed criteria for reporting non-financial performance, the Global Reporting Initiative was rolling up its sleeves and getting on with the job. While they were pondering assurance guidelines, the AA1000 standards were being expanded. Meanwhile, pressure for greater disclosure of companies’ social and environmental impacts was growing not in Brussels, but in London, Paris, Frankfurt and other financial centres. The Commission was quite simply too slow, and too late. Now it is paying the price.
Since jumping on the CSR bandwagon five years ago, the Commission has achieved little and has now effectively jumped off. It has sidelined itself. Companies will join its European Alliance not because they particularly want to, but because it is politic for them to do so. Membership will anyway not require them to do very much. Some sectors, such as higher educational establishments with an interest in CSR and small businesses, stand to benefit, but overall there will be few winners. An opportunity to show how policy makers can support the voluntary approach has been wasted.
see also pages one and nine
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